Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One

by McPhail, Melissa

  Her eyes really flew wide then.

  Ean intervened before Alyneri could retaliate. “So what do I call you? Forgive me, but ‘friend zanthyr’ is a little too ironic for my taste.”

  The zanthyr threw back his head as if to laugh but made no sound; only his eyes glittered with amusement. “You may call me Phaedor, my prince.”

  Fynn was heard to murmur then, “This is the dumbest decision in the long history of dumb decisions.”

  Phaedor’s emerald gaze looked the royal cousin up and down; he seemed amused. “You could always send me away,” he offered with an indifferent shrug.

  Not on my life, thought Ean, but he replied, “You are welcome at our fire.”

  “Ean,” Fynn protested hotly under his breath, “you can’t know the creature isn’t working for Björn!”

  The zanthyr shook his head. “I am no wielder’s minion. You think me a fool.”

  “More likely he wouldn’t have you,” Fynn grumbled. Then he added with a glare at Ean, “Far be it from us to follow the example of an enemy, even if it seems wise.”

  The zanthyr regarded the royal cousin with an aloof yawn.

  So why have you really come? Ean wondered, gazing thoughtfully at the creature. And why do I trust you so completely? It was the strangest thing he’d ever experienced, this wholehearted belief that, whatever his professed ‘motives,’ the zanthyr only had Ean’s best interests at heart. It’s insane, that’s what it is! He knew he had no reason at all to trust the zanthyr, and every reason not to.

  Abruptly Fynn got to his feet. “I hope you know what you’re doing, cousin,” he said, staring down at Ean with angry, unforgiving eyes. “Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.” With that, he turned and tromped away with the ever-silent Brody shadowing his heels.

  Phaedor chuckled, the sound a haunting rumble deep from within his chest. “My, my…” he sighed happily as he watched Fynn depart, “this diversion may turn out to be just what I needed.”

  Forty-eight

  ‘Patterning is as easily mastered as living an existence free of doubt.’

  – Sobra I’ternin, Eleventh Translation, 1499aF, A Discourse on the Nature and Relationship of Patterning and the Currents of Elae

  Ean and his companions started out again at dawn, but as they huddled in their cloaks and headed off into a frosty, rose-hued morning, a strained silence lingered among the group. Tanis caught many furtive glances aimed at the zanthyr, who rode his black warhorse bareback and stayed a good three lengths behind the others. In contrast, Phaedor seemed not at all perturbed, and he wiled the hours in idle contentment, reining his stallion with one hand and flipping his dagger with the other.

  Tanis noted that Prince Ean ventured to speak with Phaedor as they rode that morning, but though the zanthyr was accommodating, he rarely seemed to answer the prince’s questions to any satisfaction and maintained his façade of whimsical amusement, as if it was all some kind of grand game. The zanthyr’s elusive manner made Tanis twice as curious about him, while Rhys and the other men, Fynn included, kept their distance, only leveling the zanthyr hard stares which he didn’t even deign to ignore.

  Driven by adolescent curiosity, Tanis took to riding in the rear, near Phaedor, with hopes that he might be of a mind to converse—for summoning the courage to speak to the zanthyr on a whim was far more difficult a task than Tanis wanted to tackle.

  Especially after the episode with Gwynnleth.

  It happened around noon. They had stopped beside a chill-flowing waterfall to water and rest the horses. While the others conversed, Tanis wandered off into the woods and happened upon Gwynnleth coming back the other way. No sooner had they said their hellos, however, than he was there, all green eyes and black leather. Phaedor’s sudden appearance out of thin air gave Tanis a start and earned the zanthyr a heated curse from Gwynnleth.

  “Must you, Phaedor?” the Avieth had hissed after finding her breath again. She gave him a venomous glare.

  The zanthyr grinned. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Gwynnleth,” he noted with a taunting air. He gazed at her knowingly, looking smug.

  “Don’t just stand there smirking,” Gwynnleth complained. “That’s very irritating.” She snapped a branch off a nearby sapling in obvious aggravation and began waspishly shredding a neighboring bush with it.

  The zanthyr hooked his strong thumbs into his sword belt. “It’s just that I’m surprised to find you in Ean’s company,” he murmured in his goading way. “You were so vocal in your opinions about ‘humanity’ when last we spoke. I never imagined you would involve yourself with the affairs of a race which you consider so far beneath your notice.”

  The Avieth leveled him an unfriendly stare. “If this is your attempt at teaching humility, Phaedor, it is sadly inadequate. One must have suffered the virtue personally to effectively instruct another in its observance.”

  “Yet you aspire to instruct Ean in matters of self-sacrifice,” the zanthyr countered. “By this logic, how would you ever qualify to teach him?”

  Gwynnleth’s eyes were tawny daggers aimed at the zanthyr’s heart. “You are a spiteful creature! I wish you would leave me be!”

  The zanthyr regarded her drolly. “If I have offended you, it was only in my attempt to help you see your own flaws in the same manner as you so graciously assist others to see theirs—”

  “Phaedor, what is it you want?” Gwynnleth twitched the twig against her thigh impatiently.

  The zanthyr made an obsequious bow and backed away. “I meant only to assure myself of your wellness,” he answered. Straightening, he added with a shadowy grin, “And upon seeing this display of your usual disposition, I pronounce you to be quite fit.” With that, he fixed his glittering eyes upon her, flashed a wolfish smile, and vanished.

  Tanis let out a shriek and jumped back fully two paces, startled out of his wits yet again; he glared in breathless frustration at the place where the zanthyr last stood. The Avieth sourly grunted something about spiteful creatures and their infernal gloating, tossed the twig aside with startling fierceness, and herself took the form in a great blaze of golden brilliance without a word of farewell.

  As Tanis watched her disappear into the leafy heavens, he pondered the strange conversation with brooding, colorless eyes. They almost seemed old lovers, the way the two of them had snapped at each other, and yet that wasn’t quite…right. After a moment, Tanis gave up trying to figure it out and trudged back to join the others.

  To his surprise, the zanthyr was already there, passing the time reclining on one elbow on his barebacked stallion looking as if he’d never left.

  Tanis climbed back on his horse and was working up the courage to speak to the zanthyr when, as if hearing the lad’s thoughts about him, Phaedor turned his raven-black head toward Tanis and pinned the boy with one predatory green eye, the other being covered by the spill of his dark hair. Tanis realized he’d been caught staring, and he flushed, raising his hand in apology.

  Phaedor grinned at that, and he stared openly back at the boy for a very long time. Tanis felt sure that he couldn’t hold the zanthyr’s gaze, and yet he found it impossible to look away.

  The situation was distressing.

  After a long, uncomfortable silence, Phaedor finally observed, “You have an innocence about you, Tanis, that should you manage to retain, will make you a favorite with the women in later life.”

  Startled as he was by this observation, Tanis couldn’t suppress his smile.

  “Ah, yes,” the zanthyr said, giving the boy a conspiratorial wink. “That smile will no doubt help you, too.”

  Tanis really grinned back at him then; the compliments he received at fourteen were few and far between.

  They rode on soon thereafter, and Tanis mustered the courage to bring his mount alongside the zanthyr’s. Phaedor smiled in welcome, and he tossed the lad the dagger he’d been toying with.

  Tanis looked it over with curiosity. It seemed to be fashioned of a singular onyx
-black stone, but how it was forged was quite a mystery, for he could find neither seam nor fold. Nor did the stone reflect even the slightest light—not even a glint when he held it to the sun. The lad quickly recalled the legends that told of zanthyrs carrying as many as a dozen of their darkly enchanted blades on their person at one time.

  As Tanis studied the dagger, he noticed the zanthyr regarding him with an almost friendly smile.

  “You have questions in your eyes, Tanis,” Phaedor noted as he watched the boy.

  Tanis blinked, startled. Can he read my mind, or is it just so obvious?

  The zanthyr chuckled and pulled out another dagger to toy with. He pointed it toward the identical one in the lad’s hands. “You keep that one. Something to remember me by.”

  Tanis raised brows at that and asked, rather incredulous, “A gift, my lord?”

  Phaedor grinned at him and flipped the hair from his eyes with a casual toss of his head. “Now why does that surprise you, Tanis?” he asked, glancing sideways at the boy.

  Tanis flushed at the hinted rebuke. “I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t mean to seem…I just never expected—”

  “Now, now…don’t be so hard on yourself,” the zanthyr interrupted with an offhanded wave of his dagger. “You may decide to dislike me after you’ve known me for a few days.”

  Tanis gave him a swift look; he was more than a little surprised at the zanthyr’s acute awareness of his thoughts—more aware of them, in fact, than Tanis was himself. “How…how can you know my feeling so?” he whispered. “Have you a Truthreader’s gift, my lord?”

  Phaedor gave him an indifferent shrug. “Does the manner of my knowing make it any less true? Right now you’d like for us to be friends, but never fear that I will hold you accountable to the desire. Emotions are fickle things, just like females.”

  Tanis observed quietly, “Somehow, my lord, I get the feeling that if I come to dislike you, such a circumstance will have been your intention.”

  The zanthyr grinned broadly at that. “My, my, I do believe some of your lady’s impertinence has rubbed off on you.”

  Tanis blushed into an embarrassed smile. “I meant no disrespect. It’s just that…” he paused, chewed on his lip uncertainly.

  “Go on,” Phaedor said with a tolerant grin.

  “Well, my lord, it’s just that you seem quite in control of the way others perceive you. We see what you want us to see…images, variations of images even. But…”

  Phaedor was clearly amused. “But…?”

  The lad turned serious then, answering him, “But I suspect you must have loved her…or still do…or something like that.”

  “Gwynnleth, you mean?”

  Tanis nodded.

  Phaedor sighted down his dagger, then tossed it into the air and made it flip twice before catching it by the point. “Yes, well…” he shrugged. “Our history is just that. History.”

  “You say,” Tanis countered, “yet you risked her ire just to assure yourself of her wellbeing.”

  “Is that how it seemed to you?” the zanthyr asked in an amused tone.

  Tanis shrugged.

  Phaedor shook his head. “There was never any risk involved, lad. Emotion is a woman’s most potent weapon, but as soon as a man recognizes that truth, the weapon is all but rendered powerless.”

  Tanis felt confused by his words. “Were you just trying to upset her for no reason then?”

  “You’ve missed the point completely, Tanis. How she felt about it is of no consequence whatsoever.”

  “Then what was the point of the conversation?”

  The zanthyr grinned. “Now that is the important question.”

  Tanis gazed at him curiously. “Then you did upset her on purpose—just to see how she would respond.” When the zanthyr made no reply, Tanis said, “That’s not a very nice thing to do to someone you love.”

  The zanthyr pinned him with an irritated eye, but it quickly softened to amusement. “You see now why I am such a ‘spiteful creature’ to quote a recent phrase?” he asked, turning profile again. “Give a boy a dagger, and he thinks he can say anything. You never get respect in response to kindness, and thereafter, your best piercing looks only draw chuckles.”

  “My lord, that’s untrue!”

  Phaedor raised a hand for silence. “Tanis, I fear you are instilling me with attributes I do not possess. Love is a strictly human emotion: frail and transient. The conversation you overheard is but the latest in a long-extant argument; it was no lovers’ quarrel. Choices were made many years ago. That is all there is to the story.”

  Tanis felt strangely hurt by his words, though he saw no reason why they should bother him so. His Truthreader’s sense told him the zanthyr believed what he said, and yet there was something about his words…as if a more solid truth ran beneath every ephemeral sentence.

  Seeing the boy’s confused and slightly injured expression, the zanthyr’s gaze turned gentle. “Tanis,” he began, displaying unexpected patience for the lad, “how can you expect to understand something between two people you know nothing about? My motives are my own, but I assure you, they have nothing to do with love. Our dance is naught but battles waged, won and lost.” He flipped his dagger and caught it by the point again. Turning the boy a fast grin, he gloated, “Victory is bliss.”

  Tanis frowned disapprovingly at him. “Is everything a game to you then, my lord? Is nothing sacred?”

  At that question, Phaedor settled the lad with an arresting stare, just a small reminder of whom Tanis was speaking to and that he could frighten the boy at will. “Have you any idea, Tanis, what it’s like to be immortal?” the zanthyr inquired quietly, his question all the more ominous for its being softly spoken. “Any idea at all what a curse that is? To know that you will live forever? That only the hand of an enemy your equal can grant reprieve?” He turned profile again and stared forward with an unnatural calm that was intensely disquieting accompanying those words. Abruptly he looked to the boy. “How many times do you think you’d be willing to watch Alyneri die?”

  Tanis was horrified by the question. He swallowed, mumbling, “My lord, I don’t understand—”

  “Do you not?” Phaedor countered, his gaze powerfully intent. “I think you do. You love her—that is obvious—but if you were immortal and she was not, you’d watch her die…and die, and die. Everyone you loved would be taken from your arms in death, until it seemed there was nothing for you anymore but indifference,” and he added with terrible deliberation, “because indifference does not hurt, young one. It is cold and steadfast, and like love, it lasts forever in your heart.”

  Tanis stared at the zanthyr feeling benumbed. He had no idea how to console someone over such a thing as that.

  Phaedor cast the boy a sardonic eye. “Dare you ask again if anything is sacred? What could be sacred if love is not? If love is as mortal as a rose, or daylight, or the grass beneath your feet?”

  “But it isn’t mortal, my lord,” Tanis insisted, feeling that he had to change the zanthyr’s mind lest he lose his own innocence. “You’ve shown that even now, for I know you love still in your heart—if not Gwynnleth then others you have lost. The very nature of your anger proves it so!”

  The zanthyr peered out of the corner of one eye, a glimpse of emerald caught between wavy strands of his dark hair. “You see deeply for your age,” he grumbled.

  Tanis returned a sheepish grin; he wasn’t used to others admitting he was right. Her Grace never did. He thumbed his new dagger as he watched the creature beside him, who seemed so unnaturally perfect. Pondering how to phrase his next question—one that had been on his and everyone else’s mind since the zanthyr’s arrival—his heart started pounding so fast he thought it might burst. Finally, when the anticipation was as fearful as any answer might be, Tanis said, “My lord…”

  The zanthyr gave him a tolerant look beneath the spill of his raven hair.

  Tanis almost dared not ask the question now that he had the zanthyr’s attent
ion. “My lord, I know your motives are your own,” he braved, not knowing what the zanthyr would say but so wanting the reassurance of his answer, “but have you joined us now because the danger to Prince Ean has grown?”

  Phaedor’s gaze was both terrible and deeply troubled. “Yes.”

  Tanis felt the truth of his words resonating back from the zanthyr’s own awareness, such that the lad understood this danger in a way that was far more dreadful than his own knowledge would have permitted him to feel.

  “And…” he gasped for the words, “are you here to protect him?” Tanis felt compelled to ask, though he dreaded any answer other than the one he hoped for. But he quickly learned that the zanthyr’s motives were not so easily exposed.

  “Ah, now that is a question much on the order of asking one’s future of a seer,” Phaedor cautioned. He stared hard at the boy. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear those answers?”

  Tanis blanched. “…No,” he said with a gulp, though he was surprised to find his head nodding yes.

  The zanthyr chuckled. Turning profile again, he observed with amusement, “Just what I needed, indeed!”

  Making camp that night was something of a spectacle, for none of the men save Prince Ean wanted anything to do with the zanthyr, and if he inadvertently came near them while upon his own affairs, they would drop whatever they were doing or take it elsewhere to do it. As might be expected, this made a fair mess of things while cooking or setting up tents—all to no avail, for certainly the zanthyr made no notice of their efforts of futile protest. Finally he finished tending to his own matters and took a seat at the fire—which was always Tanis’s job to get going—and stretched his feet out to the flames.

  Tanis grinned in welcome, and the zanthyr gave him an affectionate wink, noting with amusement that Tanis had his new dagger shoved proudly through his belt. Gwynnleth came next to join them, followed by Prince Ean, who sat down cross-legged beside Tanis and began tossing dry fir limbs onto the flames, idly watching each one blaze and dissipate, reminding Tanis of the Avieth’s transition in and out of the form.